To act in front of the stories: Narrative interpretation as a resource to move from what to how

ABSTRACT

The focus of this Ruth Zemke lecture is to present and reflect on ways theoretical resources on narrative interpretation are relevant to some of the key tensions and challenges facing the study of human occupation and related practices today; The tensions between an individual and a social framing of human occupation, between a focus on identifying discrete elements of human occupation versus a processual focus on how human occupations unfold and work, and finally the tensions between focusing on success versus acknowledging human vulnerability as resource. Drawing on Ricoeur’s notion of narrative interpretation as a threefold mimetic process involving material, emplotment, and communication, suggestions are offered on how a narrative-in-action approach illuminates how processes of agency and change in people’s human occupation can be shaped and revised.

露丝·泽姆克（Ruth Zemke）讲座的重点是，在介绍和反思叙事解释的理论资源时，如何与研究当今人类生活活动和相关实践时所面临的一些主要压力和挑战相联系； 个人与人类生活活动的社会框架之间的矛盾关系；关注确定人类生活活动的离散要素与关注人类生活活动如何展开和运作的过程之间的矛盾关系；最后关注成功与承认人类脆弱性之间的矛盾关系。 借鉴利科（Ricoeur）将叙事解释视为涉及材料、情境和交流的三重类似过程的概念，本文提出，行动中叙事的方法能够阐明代理过程和人们生活活动的变化是如何被塑造和修改的。

El objetivo de esta conferencia de Ruth Zemke es presentar y reflexionar sobre las formas en que los recursos teóricos inherentes a la interpretación narrativa son relevantes para abordar algunas de las tensiones y retos clave a los que se enfrenta el estudio de la ocupación humana y las prácticas relacionadas en la actualidad. Las tensiones se presentan entre un encuadre individual y social de la ocupación humana, entre un enfoque centrado en la identificación de elementos discretos de la misma y un enfoque procesual relativo a cómo se realizan y funcionan las ocupaciones humanas y, por último, entre centrarse en el éxito y reconocer la vulnerabilidad humana como recurso. Partiendo de la noción de Ricoeur de que la interpretación narrativa constituye un triple proceso mimético que implica el material, el trabajo y la comunicación, se ofrecen sugerencias en torno a cómo un enfoque narrativo en acción ilumina la forma en que pueden configurarse y revisarse los procesos de agencia y cambio en la ocupación humana de las personas.

KEYWORDS:

• Occupational science
• Narrative
• Interpretation

Prologue

My grandmother Rut was born in the year 1900 in a little village in western Sweden, one of eight siblings. Three of them died young and five survived into adulthood. Rut’s family were small farmers, and the farm could not provide enough work for all the children when they grew up. In earlier times, a young woman might have found a place as a maid with other families or married and moved to another farm. However, society was changing, affecting potential life paths. Rut stayed on the farm as many young people did at the time (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Rut Olsson 1900-1955

Rut spent years at school. School gave children language and knowledge that could be used to act in the spaces and movements that were available to them. However, universal schooling was restricted to 6 years. Rut was a devoted member of the folk movements of her time. Her local church was organized democratically and had developed in opposition to the state church. The village co-op gave people access to necessities outside the control of landowners and businesses. Being a member of these local – also national and international – movements fostered relationships and opened other stories and horizons.

Rut’s family were readers. Rut read the influential books of her time and engaged with the issues at stake in society. But as a young woman from a family of small farmers, she could not really get an education and create her own life, and most citizens of the time lacked the necessary social structure for it.

When Rut was 34, she became pregnant. Though the father – my grandfather – did marry Ruth, he soon left, and the social consequences that followed were not easy to handle. Rut stayed with her brother and sisters on the farm, and like many of her contemporaries, she took care of the cattle in exchange for food and a room. Rut was inventive and capable when it came to finding money for the things she needed for her daughter. She cleaned for the well-to-do guests who came to their lakeside summerhouses in summer. She picked flowers in the spring, and lingonberries and chantarelles in summer and autumn, sometimes even taking the train down to nearby Gothenburg to sell them at the market there.

So, what about Marianne, my mother? Although it was not usual for the young girls of the village, Rut and her sisters agreed that they wanted Marianne to get out of the village and have an education and an academic profession. But where would the resources for this be found? They were living in a period of transition. A couple of decades later, university education would be for everyone in Sweden. But at this time, there were still economic and social barriers. Only gradually would shared resources be made available.

I have heard this story many times. And you have probably heard similar stories from your families and friends. The lived stories of the people who came before us. These stories are often very significant for us, and we return to them. But whose story am I telling? It is of course Rut’s Story, but she died before I was born. If she was to hear this, she would probably object to specific details and maybe even to some of the basic plot. It is also my mother’s story. She is the one who has been telling me about her mother Rut in many ways over the years. And it is my story; I am telling it now. As I write these lines, I hear Rut’s and my mother’s voices, but I also hear elements from the multiverse of material and plots that have been given to me by culture throughout my days. So maybe Rut’s story in the form I share here is best presented as an example of the interpretative recourses that are given to us when living and playing roles in our everyday lives?

Introduction

Interpretation, which stories are a part of, and more precisely narrative interpretation, is the focus of this lecture. Through narrative interpretation we have access to and make sense of history; and I argue that narrative interpretations matter for our lives and our occupations. I suggest that theoretical resources on narrative interpretation are relevant to some of the key tensions and challenges facing our studies of human occupation and related practices today. I will draw on Ricoeur’s notions of narrative as human communicative interpretation, and on what the philosopher Kristensson Uggla (2022) framed as Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative as a critical hermeneutics of the everyday. I employ a broken ontology and fragile understanding of the acting human to outline my suggestion.

The tension between an individual and a social framing of human occupation

The first tension I identify is that between an individual and a social understanding of human engagement in occupation. The narrative turn found in social and health care sciences, as well as in medical anthropology and other sciences, was in many ways a turn to the individual and her lived experiences (Mattingly, 1998). It was a turn towards what we might today call person-centeredness – and away from the generic claims of sciences such as medicine, and also sometimes from tendencies in social science to overlook the particular and the individual (Josephsson et al., 2022). However, one result of a narrative turn can be framed as individualism and an inability to recognize the situated nature of human experience.

When Mary Reilly (1963) formulated her well-known argument that man “can influence the state of his health” through the use of his hands (p. 2), it was important in her time, but concomitantly an example of how we have talked and written about human occupation as an individual male phenomenon. Several scholars have subsequently challenged such framings of occupation. When the occupational scientists Dickie, Cutchin, and Humphry (2006) reintroduced Pragmatism and Dewey’s writings on transactional inquiry, they reminded us of the profound social and transactional dimensions of human occupation. Narrative interpretation is important for individuals, but work cannot be framed as a solely individual phenomenon. Can narrative interpretation be a resource for understanding how individual, social, and transactional aspects come together in human action?

The tension between mapping components: The ‘what’ of occupation and developing knowledge of how occupation unfolds

Are we mainly a mapping science, clarifying the components of occupation? And if so, are we satisfied with that state of the art? The second tension I want to highlight is that between a focus on identifying discrete elements and components of human occupation and a processual focus on how human occupations unfold and work. Do we need to move from a focus on identifying components and categories of human occupation to developing theory and understanding of how occupation works? Reid, Hocking, and Smythe (2019) recently criticized our discipline’s use of diagrams to portray complex phenomena, proposing a move towards what matters for people. I interpret their arguments as a call for theory and language on how occupations work in daily situations. Narrative interpretation is about just that – processes in daily living. Could theory on narrative interpretation offer resources helpful to developing theory on how occupation is understood, generated, and how it unfurls in daily situations?

Theory, methods, and language attentive to human vulnerability

The third tension I will address in my arguments is the call for theory, methods and language that include human vulnerability in our studies of occupation. Scientific discourse is often about progress and achievement. Maybe this state of the art is one reason why the study of occupation often lacks language of and attention to human vulnerability. Vulnerability is nevertheless one of the core elements of the human experience. It is sometimes linked with human passivity and inactivity. However, Judith Butler (2016) has shown how human agency and resistance in everyday action are grounded in our shared basic human condition as vulnerable. When vulnerability is missing, our science might fail to fully portray human occupation, and also the ways change and influence are enacted in daily occupations. Do theories on narrative interpretation offer resources to fix this flaw?

Invited to Our Table

Before advancing my arguments further, it is time to present the people who have influenced and guided my travel in vistas of narrative interpretation. Melissa Park, an occupational scientist now at McGill University, taught me a useful metaphor for scientific and personal foundations: ‘Who is invited to your table?’ (Personal communication, 2008). I introduce them below.

My understanding of narrative and action is very much grounded in studies on narrative as a student of Professor Mattingly, back in the 1990s at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She introduced me to the French philosopher Ricoeur, his interest in narrative and human action, and his understanding of Aristotle’s use of the term mimesis. Reading Ricoeur also gave me a possible language for human vulnerability. The Norwegian occupational scientist Sissel Alsaker and I have been working together on these theoretical resources for over 20 years, slowly but persistently teasing out their relevance and potential for human occupation. Some of the methodological tools we have used come, perhaps rather unorthodoxly, from poetry and novels. For example, reading poetry by Wisława Szymborska and considering her use of language around meeting and communion, and reasoning by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) helped us envisage roles of versatility and complexity. To seek ethical and moral relevance, I have listened to arguments about human vulnerability posed by the philosopher Judith Butler. Reading and working with writings by these scholars and artists is an ongoing creative endeavour of suggestive interpretations, and this lecture is a continuation of these dialogues.

Aristotle and the Narrative Quest

Four hundred years before the current era, the Dionysus theatre in Athens was a festival venue where different plays competed. How was it that the plays, acted narratives performed using masks, scenography, and choreography very different from what they portrayed, often felt even more real to the audiences than the actual world? Intrigued by this function of narrative, Aristotle used the term mimesis – a term that has been subject to many interpretations and often understood as imitation (Mattingly, 1998). However, when Ricoeur (1990/2014) published his well-known work on time and narrative, he opened up Aristotle’s term into a threefold mimetic emploting process often referred to as ‘stages of interpretation’: prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration; or material, emplotment, and communication.

1. Material is the prerequisite for mimetic narrative interpretation, the shared knowledge and conditions we are situated in, such as language, material resources, and available interpretations. Often this material is already storied. Here we also find ideologies and power-structures.

2. Emplotment is the assembly of material into a plot. We might call it the workshop of narrative interpretation. Through emplotment, we humans connect material into stories that make sense to us by sharing important quests. An important feature in this process is what Jerome Bruner (1986) identified in his well-known text on narrative as a subjunctivizing reality “to be trafficking in human possibilities rather than in the settled certainties” (p. 26). In line with his reasoning, we can identify emplotment as creative processes of making possible understandings.

3. Communication sets narrative in motion, ensuring that it involves social interpretations. Communication permeates all narrative interpretation. Whereas the material in mimesis 1 is accessible through communication, emplotment in mimesis 2 involves ongoing communicative testing of possible meanings and configurations.

These three layers of mimesis help us to see the multidimensional phenomena of everyday narrative interpretation. Moreover, they open narrative interpretation to connect past, present, and future, thus helping to guide living and engagement in occupations. I see one problem, though: Ricoeur labelled these dimensions of narrative interpretation mimesis 1, 2 and 3, but the language of numbers leads us to connect to categorizations and hierarchy rather than a ‘subjuntivizing reality’.

So how do we move from labelling what narrative interpretation is to a language of how it works? In a well-known Ted Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) reasoned on the danger of a single story. Very much in line with Bruner’s reasoning on subjunctivizing realities, she argued that stories can open our ability to versatility and multiplicity. Let us investigate further how such theoretical resources on narrative interpretation can be formulated by exploring the language Ricoeur proposed as central when outlining narrative as a critical hermeneutics of the everyday.

Acted Narrative Mediation and Hermeneutical Fantasy

Maybe we could simply frame fantasy as a productive language of possibilities for expanding human interpretations? Ricoeur (1990/2014) framed the function of narrative interpretation as poetic, thereby introducing a metaphorical productive dimension to human interpretation. Emplotment adds productive distanciation to material to be interpreted, the distance opening up spaces to interpret and make meaning in different ways (Josephsson et al., 2006). This poetic function can, however, be lost. If we come up against locked material and circumstances, barriers, or unfair distribution of resources, we might find ourselves barred into settled certainties, stuck in a single story.

So how then do we access the opening and productive functioning of narrative interpretation? Following Ricoeur’s reasoning on narrative interpretation, we might read Bruner’s (1986) words on ‘wandering in human possibilities’ as referring to narrative mediation and hermeneutical fantasy creating unfolding narrative interpretations and possibilities in meanings. Still, Bruner’s reasoning had human thought in focus, narrative interpretation as a cognitive function. By contrast, narrative interpretation in Ricoeur’s reasoning has a close connection with human action. One of Mattingly’s (1998) significant contributions to occupational science is her persistent labour of unveiling Ricoeur’s arguments on how narrative interpretation and human action interrelate.

If we follow Ricoeur’s reasoning on narrative interpretation, our actions produce both narrative mediation and hermeneutical fantasy, resources for re-establishing the openness of our lived stories in everyday occupations. In other words, Ricoeur’s notions of narrative interpretation are helpful in explaining how human occupations are generated, communicated, and altered in everyday life: not just what occupation is, but how it works. But note that we are still missing one very significant element in our reasoning. We cannot talk about possibilities in everyday narrative interpretation without including one basic human condition, namely our vulnerability.

Vulnerability and Broken Ontology as a Human Condition and Possibility

As stated, Judith Butler (2016) identified vulnerability as an integrated part of human embodied social relations and actions, helping us to understand how and why forms of resistance emerge as they do. Her arguments combine well with Ricoeur’s reasoning on a broken ontology as a human condition and possibility. We live through our bodies and our bodies have limitations, as do our lived narrative interpretations.

We are familiar with Descartes’ cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Ricoeur adapted this to cogito blessé (I am because I am vulnerable and incomplete) (Kristensson Uggla, 1994). To quote the poet Tomas Tranströmer (2011), “you will never be complete and that’s how it’s meant to be”. Following this line of reasoning, we need each other, we need the other. Hermeneutical interpretation becomes a social mediation rather than merely an individual endeavour. This human condition is also a human possibility. Through narrative interpretation, we are invited to a dialogue involved in relationships and togetherness (Herulf Scholander et al., 2022; Nyman et al., 2014). See Figure 2.

Figure 2. Conversations by Artist Margit Schyborger. Reproduced with permission.

My Main Arguments Again

I started this lecture with the suggestion that theoretical resources on narrative are relevant to some of the key tensions and challenges facing our studies of human occupation and related practices today. I was drawing on Ricoeur’s notions of narrative as human communicative interpretation and on what the philosopher Kristensson Uggla framed as his understanding of narrative as a critical hermeneutics of the everyday, making use of a broken ontology and fragile understanding of the acting human.

Before ending, I want to reflect on the ways in which narrative interpretation is critical. Given humans’ broken ontology and the provisional and poetic character of the meanings we live by, we need critical communication to work out what the good might be in our everyday together – a critical communicating cogito. Not all interpretations or all narratives are good for guiding everyday life, communities, and practices in fruitful directions. But how can we judge narrative interpretations? I follow Ricoeur’s (1992) proposals and suggest we find an answer in the presence of the others. Our interpretations need to acknowledge the presence and involvement of others as a critical guide.

Sissel Alsaker identified this critical lived narrative interpretation as narrative-in-action, borrowing the idea for a hyphenated term from Donald Schön’s (2017) reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (Alsaker et al., 2009). Let us use narrative-in-action as a frame for what I have been suggesting in this lecture.

The lived critical mediating function of narrative-in-action presents theoretical resources offering opportunities to understand the transformative function of engagement in occupation, as well as judge when that engagement is static. I suggest a fluid and open relationship between narrative-on-action (i.e., making meaning of everyday occupations) and narrative-in-action (i.e., the ongoing interpretation we live through our occupations). I identify a mediating function of narrative-in-action as a poetic interpretation giving ground for more than a single story.

As suggested, an ontology of human knowledge as fundamentally fragile and broken is a basic condition that leads to an understanding of the social fundaments of human occupation. Our interpretations are never final; they invite the other and others into critical dialogues on what the good might be in situations, societies, and practices.

It is not easy to move from a focus on what to how – that is, from components of a phenomenon to how it works. Still, I argue today that developing theory and language for transformative functioning of everyday engagement in occupation is very much at the heart of our discipline and related practices. I suggest that a narrative-in-action approach drawing on Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative as a critical hermeneutics of the everyday is one steppingstone in furthering our critical dialogues on how human occupation is generated, altered, and lived.

Epilogue: To Act in Front of the Stories

My mother made it to university. She did so with the help of scholarships, foundations, changing social and political structures, Rut’s hard work, and her own agency and skills. Despite restrictions imposed by dominant stories in her community and local cultures, she did not have a single story to enact. There were several to listen to, be rooted in, communicate with, and reverse. While writing this talk, I have been reflecting with my mother on her life, my grandmother Rut, and all the other people around the globe living their lives as they mediate the consequences of the structures they are part of.

Rut was very much restricted by the dominant stories. But she was able to live and act in the face of them, engaging with others, capable of testing out and influencing possibilities in her local community. I argue that lived narrative interpretation is one resource in our mission – a way to develop, mediate, or negotiate philosophical and theoretical resources on the roles of human occupation in how we can live together and build good and fair communities together. Let me end with a quote from the Nobel laureate Wisoava Schymborska (1996):

One hole in the net and you slipped through?

I couldn’t be more shocked or

speechless.

Listen,

how your heart pounds inside me.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.